Cover of Chris Carlsson's new book "Nowtopia"

Chris Carlsson, the author of Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration is in Edinburgh to talk about his new book, Nowtopia and related topics. He’s going to be at Word Power (Nicholson Street) on Wednesday 15th April from 6pm, and so should you be.

After the book talk, there’s a social at the Forest from 9pm, featuring music from Orkestra Nowtopia.

Here’s what “they” say about his latest book:

Outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, and even the Burning Man festival are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation that is redefining politics as we know it. As capitalism continues to corral every square inch of the globe into its logic of money and markets, new practices are emerging through which people are taking back their time and technological know-how. In small, under-the-radar ways, they are making life better right now, simultaneously building the foundation – technically and socially – for a genuine movement of liberation from market life.
Nowtopia uncovers the resistance of a slowly recomposing working class in America. Rarely defining themselves by what they do for a living, people from all walks of life are doing incredible amounts of labor in their “non-work” time, creating immediate practical improvements in daily life. The social networks they create, and the practical experience of cooperating outside of economic regulation, become a breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification to which capitalism reduces us all.
The practices outlined in Nowtopia embody a deep challenge to the basic underpinnings of modern life, as a new ecologically-driven politics emerges from below, reshaping our assumptions about science, technology, and human potential.
With historical grounding, a toolbox drawing from multiple schools of anti-capitalist thought and theory, and a refreshingly pragmatic approach, Carlsson opens our eyes to the revolutions of everyday life.
Chris Carlsson, executive director of the multimedia history project “Shaping San Francisco,” is a writer, publisher, editor, and community organizer. He has edited four collections of political and historical essays. He helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as Critical Mass, and was long-time editor of Processed World magazine.

What I say is: it’s damned good and inspiring stuff in its stories of what regular folks are co-operating in day-to-day, whether that’s guerrilla gardening or bike repair co-ops. I’m not convinced that this necessarily leads to a “breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification,” as these kind of projects regularly get assimiliated into a status quo, but that just makes a jumping-off point for interesting debate. Exactly what book tours are for!